WASHINGTON, Dec 19, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Journalists faced growing dangers of
being targeted for killing for their work in 2018 even as the risks from war
and conflict declined, a media watchdog said Wednesday.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said 34 of the 53 journalists killed
on duty this year around the world were “singled out for murder.”
“The number of journalists targeted for murder in reprisal for their
reporting nearly doubled in 2018 from a year earlier, driving up the overall
count of journalists killed on the job,” the New York-based watchdog group
said in a report.
The reported echoed concerns in a similar report this week from Paris-based
Reporters Without Borders, which found the death toll at 80, using a
different methodology that includes bloggers, citizen journalists and media
workers.
Both reports cited an alarming increase in reprisals against reporters,
highlighted by what CPJ called the “brazen murder” of Washington Post
columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
The CPJ report said that while the total number of journalists killed on
duty hit its highest level in three years, the number killed in conflict fell
to its lowest since 2011.
The total is up from 47 killed in 2017, of which 18 were “pinpointed for
murder,” CPJ said.
“Afghanistan, where extremists have stepped up deliberate attacks on
journalists, was the deadliest country and accounted for much of the
increase,” the report said.
AFP’s chief photographer in Afghanistan, Shah Marai, was among 25 people
killed along with eight other journalists, in an April bomb attack.
The press rights group lamented “a lack of international leadership on
journalists’ rights and safety” that may be increasing the dangers for the
news media, illustrated by the Khashoggi killing.
“The most vocal head of state in Khashoggi’s case has been Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government has effectively shut down
the independent media and is jailing more journalists than any other around
the world for the third consecutive year,” said the report by CPJ’s Elana
Beiser.
“The White House, traditionally a strong defender of global press freedom,
has equivocated on the blame for Khashoggi’s murder… Essentially, (US
President Donald) Trump signaled that countries that do enough business with
the United States are free to murder journalists without consequence.”
CPJ said it was investigating the killing of another 23 journalists in
2018, but so far not confirmed that the deaths were related to their work.